The Ethics of the Future: Genetic Engineering and Immortality Medicine

2015 is Going to Be a Fascinating Year for Longevity Science

By Professor Mark

How do you feel about the potential for great advances in Human Longevity Science that have been occurring in recent years? Do you feel excited about the prospect of living a much longer life, or are you indifferent? Are you nervous about the prospects of what this sort of tinkering with genetics and human nature might bring?

Is the potential for a vastly expanded lifespan going to be something that everyone can enjoy, or will it be an advantage simply for those that can afford it? If you could live 100 years longer, would you want to? Would you care if the opportunity were afforded to you as an individual? Would such a huge opportunity lead to a new and beautiful life on earth, or would earth somehow take these momentous advantages and turn the world on its head?

My Beliefs Regarding Advanced Genetic Engineering

Many years ago, when I was an undergraduate at Penn State, our professor posited similar questions in our Genetics Class, which played a major role in affecting my beliefs toward the subject of hyper-longevity and Genetic Engineering. The class was large, with more than 100 students, and my professor asked the class what their opinions were regarding the use of genetic manipulation and engineering to alter human life.

Surprisingly, the class was completely silent. In response to this silence, the professor called up two students to debate the subject. One of my classmates volunteered to voice his opposition to genetic engineering, and I chose to volunteer, providing an argument in favor of it.

My opponent voiced his opinion to the class that genetic engineering for this purpose would be ethically wrong because it is not in man’s best interest to play God. Most of our classmates seemed to agree, nodding subtly in agreement.

Personal Aesthetic: Choosing to Be Different

I felt as though I was standing upon a grand crossroads of history. As I looked around the class, it felt as though all of my classmates, for all of their cliquish differences, were being incredibly closed-minded, like they just accepted what they had been told all their lives and were afraid to think for themselves.

After the professor gauged the response of the students, I had my opportunity to argue in favor of this advanced human genetic engineering. I glanced around the class, and felt my argument come together cleanly in my mind. I saw white girls with bleached hair stretching down their backs, more than a few of which had fake breasts. I saw black girls with expensive weaves and complex and expensive hairstyles.

There were white students mimicking their hip hop and rap idols, and I even saw a young Asian student that had very obviously dyed her hair red. In my class I saw a great commingling of different styles. People both attempting to exemplify American standards of beauty and those taking on the aspects of other cultures, adopting them as their own.

As I looked around at all of this, recognizing the great diversity in my class, I had a strong feeling that there was not one person in the class that didn’t have at least one thing they wanted to alter about the characteristics they were born with. I continued thinking to myself, that these students probably wanted to be different in a variety of different ways: some wanted to be smarter, some taller. Some girls wish they had larger breasts, and some guys wanted larger penises. Others probably wish that they didn’t have to go through the trouble to put in contacts and hair dyes to look like the person they wish they were. For myself, I would have given anything just to be a few inches taller.

A Call for Genetic Freedom

After standing quietly for a moment, with all of these thoughts running through my at head a rapid place, I spoke from my position, in the back of the class, and suddenly stated loudly: Genetic Freedom!

I felt that just those two words spoke for themselves, but my professor threw a dejected glance in my direction, and I could detect her shaking her head almost imperceptibly. Her silence was a sign that she needed more. After the brief silence, I continued. I argued to the class that the individual should have full control to alter his DNA as he sees fit, so long as it doesn’t negatively impact society or the rights of anyone else.

She seemed thoroughly unhappy with the argument, and the class began to chatter loudly, nearly in unison. After the short spate of controlled chaos, the class continued with liveliness and energy, but I felt that others in the class largely shunned me as a result of the fervent beliefs I expressed in regard to what legitimately amounted to the potential future of the human race.

Will People Be Able to Resist Genetic Alteration?

I still laugh to myself to this day about how my belief met such incredulity in the face of so many. In the future, once science makes it possible to make such powerful changes to humanity at the genetic level, I am confident that these same students, if given the actual opportunity to improve themselves through futuristic genetic methods, would absolutely jump at the chance with no second thought.

It wouldn’t be Playing God. It wouldn’t be unethical. It would simply be the new reality. In fact, once the time comes to pass when Genetic Alteration becomes a reality, the exact same people today that seek out plastic surgery and cosmetic surgery will clamor for these procedures as soon as they become available. In the end, I believe I made a B in the course, which is regretful, because I’ve always remained highly interested in genetics.

The Future of Humanity: The Organic and the Engineered

Another of my professors at Penn State, himself with a doctorate in genetics, explained an interesting aspect of human evolution, one which I had never thought of before. He explained that the many races that make up humanity as a whole developed their differences as a result of dispersing far from one another, and slowly adapting to their new environments over time.

After they migrated, geography, distance, and other factors kept them from interacting heavily with one another, which caused their minor adaptations to become more pronounced. In the same way that they developed their own habits and cultures, their aesthetic and physical makeup also changed. Some grew taller, others grew paler, and each individual culture became maximally resistant to the diseases which were prominent in their area.

Even though these physical and genetic changes were significant, any healthy woman on earth could still mate with any other healthy man, no matter how different he looked or acted. What he said that truly sparked my mind was that if the different races of human beings stayed geographically isolated from one another for longer period of time, eventually the different races could have changed enough to where they could no longer produce children with one another.

Could Genetically Engineered Humans Evolve Beyond Humanity?

This can also apply to the future of genetic engineering. The modern world is so interconnected that geography has no impact on the ability of humans to breed with one another, but genetic enhancement may lead to a point at which a human born today would not be able to mate with an individual that was the result of generations of genetically altered parents.

As Genetic Engineering becomes more advanced, humans may change enough at the genetic level to prevent interbreeding between lineages which have undergone these advancements and those that chose not to. This change would of course be gradual, first reducing the ability to conceive before denying that ability altogether. At this point, it would take genetic engineering just to create a viable child for two disparate humans. Interestingly enough, it may even come to pass that different species of humans evolve from such endeavors, as distinct from one another as they are from humans themselves.

The beginning of this story could begin sometime in the next hundred years, as scientists and medical specialists develop the ability to safely and effectively alter DNA to meet the specifications of the individual.

The Future is Coming: the Great Human Divergence and the Neo-Sapient

The people that choose to reject Genetic Modification and Advanced Longevity Treatments in the near future will create an interesting binary world. This could be the beginning of a grand human experiment. This could be the focal point of a genetic divergence so strong that it literally fragments the human race, creating a new class of post-humans that have advanced to a point where they qualify as their own unique species.

I think back to the genetics course I mentioned earlier. I remember the absolute ocean of diversity that was contained within the 100-student course, and I was able to visualize a future in which Genetic Modification leads to even greater diversity, and a uniqueness that has never existed in the history of the human race. It made me think of the diversity of the universe, and the unlimited options for diversity that it represents. As someone with an affinity for astronomy, I find it utterly inconceivable that planet earth is home to the only lifeforms in the universe.

Of course, along with my great optimism, I do recognize that there are risks and unknowns related to the future of Genetic Modification. There is even the potential that the science behind Genetic Modification could be used for Genetic Warfare. There is certainly the potential that the same science that creates a new humanity could be used to destroy large swathes of it. I can imagine an apocalypse that is not nuclear and grandiose, but genetic and nanoscopic.

Post-Humanism and the Search For Other Worlds

In the end, will humans be able to develop interplanetary travel and colonization in order to insure itself against such potential apocalyptic scenarios? It’s a subject that I am particularly concerned with, and is the core reason why I support NASA and the United States Space Program. As the world moves faster and the dangers become greater, it is imperative that we are able to save humanity even in the case of a state of mutually assured destruction.

If there truly is a Genetic Revolution on the horizon, it is vitally important that we use all of the resources we have available in order to make our dreams of space colonization a reality. Imagine a future so spectacular: A future where a multitude of post-human species advance outward from earth in order to colonize space like a rainbow across the galaxy.

This journey will be arduous and epic, as earthlings spread across the cosmos in order to find new viable homes and potentially interact with other life forms.

What Would Aliens Be Like?

Can you imagine how literally otherworldly that would be? If we found advanced aliens, would they have unlocked the key to eternity? Would we have done the same? There is no doubt that the first time that we make contact with an extraterrestrial species, they will come from worlds and cultures which are absolutely unimaginable in the face of everything that we have experienced.

I may have delved a bit into the realm of science fiction, but the future of humanity in the face of Genetic Modification has the potential to be every bit as exciting and otherworldly as the potential future that I just described. It instills a tremendous sense of fear, awe, and most importantly, unlimited potential.

Do You Think That You Could Handle Immortality?

If you ask the average person out on the street about the potential future afforded by Genetic Engineering, Advanced Longevity, and Immortality medicine, you’ll likely get a number of different responses, some positive, some negative, others simply incredulous. If you surveyed 100 people, I believe that you would find that the majority would ultimately reject the idea of immortality.

Some people think that eternity would take the excitement out of life. Others fear that they would eventually just become a broken shell of their former selves as their bodies physically decline in spite of science’s ability to prevent death. For many, the concept of eternity is just as fearsome as the concept of death itself. It’s not all that different from the way that people feel about retirement these days. They are frustrated because they have to work so hard all through the healthiest part of their lives only to be too frail and broken down by the time they retire to enjoy it.

Longevity Medicine and the Future

That’s why Longevity Medicine is so important. We want our retirement years to last as long as possible, and we want to be able to enjoy them. Maybe one day, we will be retired as long in our lives as we are at work, or longer! That’s what the approach to immortality will be like!

There are a growing number of people that are optimistic about a lengthy future. They understand that even with regard to a concept like immortality, life is the sum of individual experience. Some will take advantage of a life bordering on immortality, while others would simply choose to be boring. People that live lives full of happiness and vitality shouldn’t be deprived the opportunity to extend that joy, simply because there are others who wouldn’t appreciate it!

The arguments stemming from the subject of Human Immortality continue to become both more interesting and more complex, both for those that long for such a fate, and those that oppose the concept. No matter how you feel about the idea of Advanced Longevity, there is no doubt that such opportunities to live lives we now consider unimaginable will eventually come to pass.

As long as human beings are able to engage in scientific advancement without destroying ourselves or sending ourselves back to the stone age, such opportunities will present themselves to the human race in the near future.

Gene Therapy and Stem Cell Therapy: The First Steps to Hyperlongevity

The seeds of these future endeavors are being planted today, in the fields of gene therapy, genetic medicine, and stem cell therapy. This is also the core concept behind medical treatments which seek to optimize hormone production in the body in order to alleviate the medical conditions associated with hormone imbalance and aging.

Hormone Replacement Therapy: Streamline Your Body for the Future!

Treatments such as Testosterone Replacement Therapy, Sermorelin Acetate Therapy, and Bio-Identical Human Growth Hormone Replacement Therapy seek to correct common hormonal imbalances that occur as a result of the aging process. There is even a strong argument that these hormone imbalances are actually the root cause of many symptoms of aging, including frailty, osteoporosis, and cognitive decline.

There are many Health, Wellness, and Longevity Physicians that believe that these forms of Hormone Replacement Therapy are some of the must effective means to prolong a healthy and active life when used in combination with a healthy and conscientious lifestyle. These medical treatments are the best way to decrease your mortality risk so that you are more likely to experience the next great advancement in Anti-Aging Medicine.

If you feel that your quality of life has been on the decline as a result of changes in your body and mind resulting from the aging process, I strongly encourage you to get your hormone levels checked, because there is a significant chance that you may be suffering from a reversible form of hormone deficiency.

The Future of Human Genetic Engineering

This is truly an exciting time to be alive. We are quickly approaching the point at which scientific breakthroughs in health science will continue to occur at an ever-increasing pace, with groundbreaking new health advances occurring on a regular basis. The following years will be incredibly interesting, because there are a multitude of clinical trials regarding the promise and potential effectiveness of both gene therapy and stem cell therapy.

By 2012, these studies, and other similar studies, were already displaying high levels of potential to both treat and protect both animals and humans from disease. Beyond Hormone Optimization and Genetic Therapy, the next stage of advancement will most likely be in the field of nanomedicine. Beyond nanomedicine is femtomedicine.

At this stage of scientific inquiry, this is as far as even the most forward-thinking physician or philosopher could imagine, but there is no doubt as we create new medical treatments and expend our knowledge of medical science, new opportunities for advancement will be conceptualized that could be even more life-altering and fantastic than those that we just mentioned.

When you consider the future of medicine and longevity, you realize that human beings as they are now aren’t simply the end result of millions of years of evolution, but also a gateway to the next state of terrestrial life, a transitional state between what was and what will be, an opportunity to experience even greater consciousness and enlightenment by conquering time, itself.

What is the Idea Behind Human Immortality?

When we discuss the idea of human immortality, it doesn’t just mean allowing a human being to live forever, human immortality represents the idea that it will be possible, with future biomedical and genetic enhancements, for human beings to experience a practical immortality in which one is able to live as they were in the prime of their life, for all of their life.

It seems just as you master your body and your mind in the late twenties and early thirties, your body and mind start to enter a slow and unstoppable decline. What if you could preserve that period of physical and psychological perfection forever? It is during this period that the average person reaches his or her functional peak as an individual, with regard to strength, cognitive ability, immunity, and overall health.

How Much Better Would Life Be if You Lived to 200?

Think about how different and exciting that life would be if you could have the body and mind of a 29 year old for 120 years. There are a number of people that think that humans should not have this opportunity, but it sounds much better than spending the whole sum of those years in slow and steady decline.

How Much Better Would Life Be if You Could Live Indefinitely?

Immortalists subscribe to the belief that individuals that truly enjoy life and are creative or passionate enough to find interesting or fulfilling things to do would be able to easily take advantage of a significantly lengthened lifespan. I do understand how such a long life would feel to someone that lacks passion or imagination, however. I can imagine two hundred years of absolutely drudgery. If one does not have the propensity to invest or save to create wealth, I can imagine two hundred years of hard work with nothing to show for it.

With luck, a more automated world would allow us to enjoy our lives while actually working less. Imagine a world of eco-friendly machines could do the work of one hundred men. This could be a wonderful world of leisure for all, but it could also lead to a world where machines are used as a method of control and domination, like in Frank Herbert’s dystopian novel Dune.

The Temptation of Human Immortality

Whether the opportunity for Human Immortality comes in twenty years or two hundred years, there will be those that seek out the opportunity for such a life, and there will be those that choose to reject the opportunity for immortality.

The central question that Immortalists posit is a simple one: Why would anyone actually want to die or grow old? When you think of it that way, it sounds absolutely silly. Who would ever want to do such things? But in reality, it seems as though most human beings are resigned to such a fate.

Who Really Wants to Grow Old?

More than simply growing old, who wants to lose their lust for life or their libido? Who wants to experience their own body slowly deteriorate as they are beaten down by illness and disease? Human Immortalists are those that are willing to fight against what is perceived as inevitable by society at large. They believe that those that have resigned themselves to decay and death are simply not willing to imagine a post-human age where they could evolve beyond the inevitability of death.

It seems that many humans think of Human Immortalists as harbingers of doom which are going to bring about a new genocide. They believe that Immortalists are going against the will of God by altering the Human Genetic Code in an attempt to foster extreme lifespans, improved aesthetic, and vastly improved health outcomes.

The Great Schism of Humanity

There is a strong chance that a rift will develop between those that choose genetic alteration and those that choose to forgo such opportunities. In the end, it is likely that humanity will rift into two distinct groups. Over time, greater and greater numbers will opt for Genetic Modification, and those that opt out of such procedures may potentially lose footing in society as a result of their choice.

If modification indeed has the ability to create such disparity, genetically modified humans will spread their genes with one another, and their offspring may have greater potential for both prosperity and intellect, which will create a socioeconomic rift between GM Humans and Unmodified Humans.

Will Post-Humans be able to act ethically under these circumstances? Will Unmodified Humans be able to accept a place in the world where they are unequivocally inferior to their GM counterparts? This new world will be different and exciting, and it’s up to us to create a civil world where we can act in the best interest of all.

What Other Strange Opportunities May Become Available in the Future?

On top of our ability to vastly extend and improve our long-term health, the future will also provide us with enhanced opportunities with regard to personal aesthetic. We will not only be able to cure conditions such as psoriasis which plague millions in the world today, but many may choose to move beyond mere optimization and may choose to fully customize their appearance. Perhaps one may choose not to have olive or alabaster skin as many in society desire today, but go for a different color all together.

What if someone chose to color their skin orange, green, or blue? What if they wanted to be leopard print or covered in zebra stripes? This may appear otherworldly and unnatural to our minds, but when presented with an entire array of customization, what would be so strange about doing something like that to stand out? How different would it be to dying your hair blue or rainbow, if there were no dangers in undergoing such a change?

But, given enough time and scientific innovation, skin color and other basic augmentations like genetic breast and penis enlargement will be just another evolution in the concept of general aesthetic. The potential for more extreme changes would eventually become possible. What if humans wanted to take on the characteristics of animals? What if someone wanted the ears or tail of a cat, for example? There would even be the potential to do even more drastic things that we can barely imagine today.

Genetically Engineered Pets

These genetic advancements won’t occur in a human vacuum. They will also apply to animals as well. Today people are paying top dollar for basic genetically modified hypo-allergenic dogs, and glow-in-the-dark mammals have even been developed in laboratories.

In the future, it is likely that scientists will come up with scientific modifications which significantly enhance both the aesthetic and intelligence of animals. It’s even likely that animals will experience the benefits of genetic engineering more quickly than humans, as this future will largely be facilitated by means of animal testing.

The Post-Human Era Starts with Basic Genetic Engineering and Ends with Post-Humanism, Hyperlongevity, and Potential Immortality

You may not be able to tell, but we are already in the midst of the first phase of the Post-Human era. The beginning of this era was marked by the first time that egg and sperm from two different individuals was combined and implanted into an adoptive mother. It was such a grand event in retrospect, but the passing into this new era was not met with massive celebrations, but simply with concerns over the ethics of the new future.

Post-Humanity will have a litany of moral conundrums to unravel, some that we can imagine, and others that are unfathomable to us today. The state of the mortal mind is simply not equipped to handle the moral and ethical quandaries that the genetically modified mind will face. What if there are other lifeforms just like us in other parts of the galaxy, that have also learned to take control of their very existence on the cellular level? What if the number of unique alien civilizations in the universe is unlimited? What if we as earthlings are just one form of intelligent life among a countless litany of others?

The Current State of Genetic Modification and Gene Therapy

Today, scientists, researchers, and physicians are taking the first step into this future, with the quickly growing field of genetic therapy. We are on the cusp of doing some truly amazing things, like genetically altering viruses in order to protect humans from genetic disorders and conditions. At first, these initial treatments have been risky, reserved for those in most dire need, but as medical science becomes more well-versed in these therapeutic advancements, they will become safer and more widely available to the general public. Could you imagine reducing your risk of cancer by 80% just with a single injection? That may be the future for you.

The Current State of Organ Regeneration and Stem Cell Therapy

Another aspect of genetic therapy has to do with the advancing field of Stem Cell Therapy. There are new, state of the art treatments available which utilize stem cells in order to improve the health of the heart. Patients that have experienced heart attack or heart disease can be treated with stem cells which have the ability to develop into new and healthy muscle tissue.

Similar techniques have also been used in order to regenerate other parts of the body or parts of individual organs. In one famous case, scientists biomanufactured a windpipe for a patient with the patient’s own cells. They were able to do this by taking the stem cells and allowing them to grow in culture before pouring them over a scaffold in the shape of a windpipe. Just by providing the cells with the nutrients to grow, they were able to recreate a human windpipe in the laboratory just in a matter of days.

Because the windpipe was created from the patient’s own cells, the body did not reject the windpipe when it was surgically implanted into the body. This is one of the first successful cases where a patient’s life was changed through the scientific advancements of genetic organ replacement.

Stem Cell Therapy Will Be Available in the Near Future: Hormone Replacement Therapy is Here Today!

Stem Cell Therapy is exciting and will become increasingly common and popular over the next century in the United States. Today, there are a few places where Stem Cell Therapy is available internationally, especially in Asia, but they have yet to be medically certified, and there are still a number of pertinent risks involved. In the Western World, Stem Cell Treatments are currently going through clinical trials. Although the results are mixed, continual progress is being made.

There are many scientists that believe that Stem Cell Research will lead to a new future in medicine, but policies enacted during the presidency of George W. Bush have set the United States behind by at least a decade, and other nations in Europe and Asia are currently taking advantage of their head start, and may one day eclipse us in these new and futuristic medical therapies.

In just a few short years, genetic testing will become affordable enough that it will become a common and recommended part of prenatal care as well as regular checkups throughout the lifespan. Over time, more and more Genetic Disorders will be able to be effectively treated with Gene Therapy, and with every breakthrough, people will be that much more likely to live a longer and healthier life.

Once the clinical science is sound, it won’t even be a difficult ordeal for the patient. It would simply be like going to visit the pharmacist, or making a call to a specialist pharmacy. After receiving the medication, one will be able to administer the medication on his or her own and without the frequent oversight of a medical professional.

Not long after these Genetic Treatments are made available to the public, Stem Cell Therapies will quickly become more and more advanced as well. There are even companies that have expressed a desire to take your stem cells and develop them in a laboratory environment. The goal of this treatment would be to take your own stem cells and foster the healthiest cells to multiply. After these cultures are developed, they would be mailed back to you in order for you to inject them to alleviate health conditions and other symptoms related to the aging process.

Beyond Genetic Engineering and Stem Cell Therapies, will come new forms of medical treatment that we are just beginning to research today, but will surely flourish in the coming decades: nanomedicine and femtomedicine.

Nanoscience and the Healthcare of the Future

These are tiny, genetically engineered cellular machines that will be able to improve your health by altering the functions of your body in a positive manner. They will be able to repair and alter particular forms of cells so that they function optimally, even after a period of long life in which you would expect to see physiological breakdown. It is even believed that these treatments can also preserve and repair the brain itself! Isn’t that exciting?

There are countless people in the world that have a litany of big dreams, more than they could ever hope to accomplish in a single lifetime in some cases. They have these long checklists of things they want to do in their life, a whole wide world they want to explore. Some have an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, and want to read thousands of books or learn dozens of languages in their life.

There are countless more people that have spent their early lives living on the edge, and suffer from issues such as alcohol dependency or drug addiction which have harmed their bodies and their brains. With these forms of genetic and nanomedicine, it will be possible to repair the bodies and minds of these individuals, allowing them to make a fresh start. It is possible that addiction itself may become a historical curiosity as a result of these medical advances.

What Would Do If You Had 200 More Years to Live?

Would you learn to play multiple musical instruments?

Would you research for decades in order to write the perfect novel?

Would you visit every country on earth?

The number of dreams that humans have yearned for is nearly infinite, and most never live to achieve all of their dreams, if they achieve any of their dreams at all. If you are still alive in the near future, around 2032, you will be able to take full advantage of what Longevity Medicine and Anti-Aging Therapy have to offer!

Some time in the future, we will finally overcome the condition of aging. We will be able to prevent all illness and be able to live in perpetuity, as long as we don’t succumb to an accident or similar fate. This is the extreme vision of Immortality Medicine.

The First Immortals Could be Alive Today!

By the time we make it to the 22nd century, there will already be individuals that have taken the road to Hyperlongevity, and there will likely be millions of humans that have taken part in this great leap forward into Post-Humanism. They will not only be healthier, but smarter too, with further advances in Genetic Science that allow us to amplify the capacity of our brains.

As people continue to develop down this evolutionary road, will we even consider them humans anymore? They will represent a new version of humanity, and they will likely use a new term to define themselves, whether that be Neohuman or some other clever word or phrase.

I believe that this advance into Neohumanism will also lead to a new era in space travel and human colonization. With these extensive lifespans, many Neohumans will inevitably turn their eyes to the stars in a desire to find new worlds and discover new lands and extraterrestrial lifeforms. Brave Neohumans from all over the planet will take to interplanetary space vessels in order to colonize and experience new worlds and lands that are beyond the scope of human imagination.

Can I Live to Experience This New Era of Humanity?

All of the things we’ve discussed may seem incredibly exciting to you, but we understand that these innovations are going to come in the near future. If you want to take part in this grand human experiment, it’s important that you live long enough to seize these innovations as they come! There are steps you can take now to alleviate the negative symptoms of the aging process and increase your odds of experiencing the new, human revolution.

My suggestions will not ensure that you will live for the next twenty years or longer, but they will potentially drastically decrease your mortality risk so that you are able to seek out this new and exciting future that we have laid before you.

Today, the door to Neo-Humanism, Hyperlongevity, and even Human Immortality is slightly open, and there are many alive today that will experience these magnificent and life-altering advances.

Will You Take Advantage of the Advances of Hyper-Longevity and Anti-Aging Medicine? Are You Willing to Commit to a Longer and more Youthful Life?

It’s quite plain to see that we are at the crest of an event horizon, beyond which it will truly be possible to lengthen lifespans indefinitely. The most important thing is to breach that horizon. By taking steps to increase health and lifespan now, you allow yourself the opportunity to take care of further, greater medical enhancements down the road.

The most modern advances available today are in the form of Recombinant Hormone Replacement Therapies. By optimizing your hormone balance, you increase the odds that you will live long enough to experience the new, up-and-coming breakthroughs of the mid-21st century.

If you live just a few more years, new genetic medical treatments will become available which will significantly increase your lifespan. While you are enjoying the benefit of genetic medicine, researchers and medical scientists will advance and perfect Genetic Therapy and Stem Cell Therapy, allowing you to live even longer!

There are a number of Stem Cell and Gene Therapies going through clinical trials as you read this, which show great promise in preventing or treating serious illnesses which severely inhibit lifespan today. As the medical community becomes more adept at using these new tools for the purpose of treatment, they will begin to utilize these treatments as forms of Positive Medicine.

They will be able to treat patients before they even get sick in order to optimize their health and greatly improve lifespans as a result, because the incidence of illness will decline significantly. In addition, these same treatments will be able to streamline existing physiological processes, keeping the body physiologically stronger and more youthful. They will be able to tailor these treatments uniquely to the individual in order to give the best care to each individual patient.

Stay on the Cutting Edge of Longevity Medicine to Perpetually Extend the Human Lifespan

With each of these breakthroughs and treatments, we will come one step closer to Immortality. Eventually, scientists and researchers will crack the code of human life, and finally figure out how to allow us to truly live indefinitely. It may take 100 years or it may take 500 years to achieve true Immortality, but each life-extending advance will allow people to survive until the next great advance. Hyper-Longevity will eventually become a universal reality, barring accident, war, or any other form of life-ending catastrophe.

You may feel that this is a science fiction world that I am describing, but it very well may be possible for you to experience this all for yourself. It is estimated that at some point between 2032 and 2052 we will have perfected medical practices which allow us to live significantly longer lives than we do today. Those that are optimistic feel that we are just twenty years away from this era, while those that are more cautious suggest that fifty years would be a more reasonable estimate.

Twenty to fifty years may not seem like that long in scientific study, but in terms of your own life, it is a significant period of time. Are you willing to make the sacrifices now in order to experience Hyperlongevity in the near future?

Eight Ways to Extend Your Lifespan

There are a lot of steps that you can take in your life today in order to significantly increase the odds that you survive to experience this new and amazing future. If you follow the suggestions below, conscientiously, you will maximize your potential to extend your life until further longevity advances develop in the coming decades.

These eight factors have been shown to be most important when determining the length of an individual’s lifespan:

Nutrition

Exercise

Environment

Social Circles

Vice

Climate

Calorie-Restricted Diet

Hormone Replacement Therapy

The Diet of the 21st Century: Caloric Restriction and Fasting for a Longer Life

A recent article in Newsmax Health explained that the future of longevity isn’t fad dieting or strenuous exercise, but a Calorie-Restricted diet which manages metabolism and ensures a long and healthy life.

Over the last century, there have been more than twenty thousand studies regarding caloric restriction in animal species from around the globe. All of these studies have unequivocally shown that restricting the calories in an animal’s diet has the ability to significantly increase the lifespan, and the same appears to apply to human beings..

This may sound like a starvation diet at first, but conscientiously and significantly restricting calories in the human diet is a powerful means to a longer life. Of course, most people consume at least 1500 calories per day and some consume several thousand! But, it appears that the sweet spot for human longevity is quite a bit lower than that 1500 calorie threshold.

For those that are struggling with Caloric Restriction, especially those that are currently overweight, HCG Injections can help relieve the feeling of hunger associated with the initial phase of the diet in order to acclimate to their new dietary lifestyle more effectively.

At first it may seem counter-intuitive, that too much of the Bread of Life can actually shorten the lifespan, but that absolutely seems to be the case. A diet that provides high levels of nutrients through the consumption of a small number of calories is the number one way to increase human longevity effectively. Intermittent Fasting and Caloric Restriction slow down aging and also reduce the incidence of a wide variety of illnesses that plague so many in America today.

The Modern Media and the Culture of Food in the West

In the United States, as well as other countries in the West including the United Kingdom, children were raised in a reality in which starvation was one of the greatest evils of the 19th and 20th century. The various forms of media available all showed the terrible fates of so many who were denied the food needed to live. Nowhere is this imagery more vivid in Western Civilization than in the footage captured after the end of World War II as the true horrors of the Holocaust were revealed to the world at large.

During the Cold War we also experienced further evidence of the horrors of famine as communist Russia and China struggled with providing their populations with proper nutrition, leading countless to die of starvation over many decades. Today, on modern television, there are advertisements for charities throughout Africa and Asia which show the plight of the starving in these third world nations.

I do not mean to discount the real and significant struggles that those that came before us experienced in the not so distant past, but it had a powerful impact on food culture in the West, particularly the idea that it is better to eat too much than too little. In our elementary education and beyond, we are confronted with story after story of mass famine, and it seems that part of the way that we culturally appreciate our current abundance is by partaking in it.

This appreciation for our abundance has led directly to a culture of overeating that borders on obsession. In the West, we simply love our food too much, and the expansion of cuisine in the West has allowed anyone to get whatever they want, when they want it, whether they go to the grocery store, the pizza parlor, or the Chinese buffet.

A Culture of Overeating Develops into a Culture of Force Feeding

Throughout the twentieth century, we have always been taught that we need to eat every last bite on our plates. Often times, we were also strongly encouraged, if not forced, to go back for a second portion. In addition to this, the proliferation of soda drinks has led directly to a significant increase in the empty calories that the average American consumes.

As the twentieth century barreled on, parents on average had less time to cook and prepare meals at home, which led to the greater proliferation of both fast food and microwavable dinners, loaded with sugars, salts, and carbohydrates which increased our caloric consumption even more!

During this age, restaurants like Burger King and McDonald’s became the captains of the fast food industry, generating billions of dollars in profit funneling cheap calories into the mouths of men, women, and children all across the country.

Because of all these pressures to overeat, the longevity gains that people in the West experienced as a result of modernization all began to slip away, the combination of unhealthy eating and an increasingly sedentary lifestyle is threatening today’s generation with the prospect of living shorter lives than their parents on average!

The United States would be stronger in every way, if it could foster greater consciousness about the importance of eating smarter to eat longer. If we all just made the proactive decision to engage in a lifestyle of at least mild caloric restriction, it would both decrease the price of health care and allow the citizens of this nation to live longer, happier, and healthier lives.

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Get ready for the fourth industrial revolution. It may offer you more opportunities and earlier than you might think

What do the inventions of steam power, electricity and computers have to do with your career? Well, they were the basis for the first three industrial revolutions and students are now preparing for the fourth: an age of robotics, artificial intelligence and nanotechnology.

You will be entering work at a time when traditions such as nine-to-five jobs and careers for life are challenged. The future workplace is expected to be more fluid and flexible. Agile working is more likely to be the norm, so people can balance work with hobbies and family life; job satisfaction is expected to have higher priority than titles; and it will become common for people to have more than one career in their working lives.

May be possible to use approach with other emerging infectious diseases

A Washington University researcher holds a piece of paper coated with tiny gold nanorods that can be used to test blood for Zika virus. If a patient whose blood is being tested has come into contact with Zika virus, the blood will contain substances that react with a protein coating the nanorods. The test paper doesn’t need to be refrigerated, and test results are available in about 15 minutes.

Washington University in St. Louis researchers have developed a test that quickly detects the presence of Zika virus in blood.

Currently, testing for Zika requires that a blood sample be refrigerated and shipped to a medical center or laboratory, delaying diagnosis and possible treatment. Although the new proof-of-concept technology has yet to be produced for use in medical situations, the tests results can be determined in minutes. Further, the materials required for the test do not require refrigeration and may be applicable in testing for other emerging infectious diseases.

Findings from the small study from Washington University School of Medicine and the School of Engineering & Applied Science is available online in the journal Advanced Biosystems.

The researchers tested blood samples taken from four people who had been infected with Zika virus and compared it to blood from five people known not to have the virus. Blood from Zika-infected patients tested positive, but blood from Zika-negative controls did not. The assay produced no false-positive results.

Among the reasons such a test is needed, according to the researchers, is that many people infected with Zika dont know theyre infected. Although symptoms include fever, joint pain, muscle pain and rash, many people dont feel ill after being bitten by an infected mosquito. Testing is particularly important for pregnant women because Zika infection can cause congenital Zika syndrome, which contributes to several neurologic problems in the fetus or newborn infant.

Zika infection is often either asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic, said Evan D. Kharasch, MD, PhD, one of the studys three senior investigators. The most effective way to diagnose the disease is not to wait for people to develop symptoms but to do population screening.

That strategy requires inexpensive, easy-to-use and easy-to-transport tests. Kharasch, the Russell D. and Mary B. Shelden Professor of Anesthesiology, collaborated with Srikanth Singamaneni, PhD, an associate professor of mechanical engineering & materials science, and Jeremiah J. Morrissey, PhD, a research professor of anesthesiology, to create the test, which uses gold nanorods mounted on paper to detect Zika infection within a few minutes.

If an assay requires electricity and refrigeration, it defeats the purpose of developing something to use in a resource-limited setting, especially in tropical areas of the world, said Singamaneni. We wanted to make the test immune from variations in temperature and humidity.

The test relies on a protein made by Zika virus that causes an immune response in infected individuals. The protein is attached to tiny gold nanorods mounted on a piece of paper. The paper then is completely covered with tiny, protective nanocrystals. The nanocrystals allow the diagnostic nanorods to be shipped and stored without refrigeration prior to use.

To use the test, a technician rinses the paper with slightly acidic water, removing the protective crystals and exposing the protein mounted on the nanorods. Then, a drop of the patients blood is applied. If the patient has come into contact with the virus, the blood will contain immunoglobulins that react with the protein.

Were taking advantage of the fact that patients mount an immune attack against this viral protein, said Morrissey. The immunoglobulins persist in the blood for a few months, and when they come into contact with the gold nanorods, the nanorods undergo a slight color change that can be detected with a hand-held spectrophotometer.

With this test, results will be clear before the patient leaves the clinic, allowing immediate counseling and access to treatment.

The color change cannot be seen with the naked eye, but the scientists are working to change that. Theyre also working on developing ways to use saliva rather than blood.

Although the test uses gold, the nanorods are very small. The researchers estimate that the cost of the gold used in one of the assays would be 10 to 15 cents.

As other infectious diseases emerge around the world, similar strategies potentially could be used to develop tests to detect the presence of viruses that may become problematic, according to the researchers.

First author and engineering doctoral student Qisheng Jiang (left) works with senior author Jerry Morrissey, PhD, on a test to detect Zika virus with gold nanorods mounted on a small piece of paper.

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation, grant numbers CBET1254399 and CBET1512043. Additional funding was provided by the Department of Anesthesiology, Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the Department of Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science, Washington University in St. Louis.

Washington University School of Medicines 2,100 employed and volunteer faculty physicians also are the medical staff of Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Childrens hospitals. The School of Medicine is one of the leading medical research, teaching and patient-care institutions in the nation, currently ranked seventh in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. Through its affiliations with Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Childrens hospitals, the School of Medicine is linked to BJC HealthCare.

On July 12, an FDA panel recommended approval of the first genetically engineered T cell for commercial sale to treat childhood leukemia, a blood cancer. The biologic could cost $300,000 per patient, leaving questions of whether some insurance companies will pay for it. Such cancer therapies can run into sizable costs for patient follow-ups. But, in the coming years, engineered T cells will be in high demand, even more so if they can be applied to solid tumors.

The Trump administration keeps threatening to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which suggests new inequalities to health care access. This will only be made worse by expensive new drugs, which test the limits of insurance reimbursement. However, even a single-payer system is unlikely to help to ensure access to such staggeringly expensive biologics. For instance, the National Health Services in Britain will be hard pressed to reimburse for six-figure biologics. If so, the only ethical action would be to use the power of the state to force down the cost of such cancer drugs.

A conservative argument against socialized medicine is based on the tragic vision of human nature, which suggests that people are guided by innate self-interests, and that societyand, by implication, biotechrequires constraint through moral and legal checks. The reality is that many of us do harbor a genetic variant that predicts a rare genetic disorder, or cancer, and we certainly cant afford to correct every anomaly in nature. However, a counter-position is that we are already participating in socialized medicine through funding the National Institutes of Health, which subsidizes the risk and cost of investigating drug targets and tools, not to mention results in generous salaries for many scientists.

In 2004, Noam Chomsky noted that Eisenhowers military-industrial complex was a misnomer, arguing that the actual purpose of taxpayer support is to boost economic prospects for investors, including those at life science companies. If you walk around MIT today, around Kendall Square, you see small biotech companies, spin-offs of government-sponsored research in what will be the cutting edge of the economy, namely, biology-based industries.

If you looked around 40 years ago (then to the newly developing Route 128 corridor), you would have seen small electronics firms, spin-offs of what was then the cutting edge of the economy, electronics, under military cover. So Eisenhowers military-industrial complex is not quite what is generally interpreted. In part, yes, its military. But a main function of the military, or the National Institutes of Health, or the rest of the federal system, is to provide some device to socialize costs, get the public to pay the costs, to take the risks. Ultimately, if anything comes out, you put it into private pockets.

That cancer patients should be criticized for depending on socialized medicine on the consumer end conceals the fact that scientists depend on taxpayers to subsidize their careers, while developing many of the technologies in academic settings and then profiteering them out. The high profile patent battle over CRISPR gene editing system was one of these situations, which resulted in a mix of philanthropic and public money paying for the invention of a technology that is now enrapt in a web of financial dealings not to mention bitter rivalries. Editas Medicine, a spinout of Harvard and MITs Broad Institute, which claims exclusive rights to medical applications of CRISPR-Cas9, signed a highly profitable $737 million deal with cancer T-cell company Juno Therapeutics.

If we are already participating in socialized medicine, the only tragedy will be if the socialism stops on the consumer side. One suggestion I have made previously is to no longer fund academic scientists and their partners who have established a strong foothold in the economy. Novartis (the company with the cancer biologic expected to price up to $300,000, compared with the $25,000 cost to actually manufacture it) recently completed a$600 million campus in Cambridge. The Broad Institute is seeded with $1.4 billion in wealth. The state of the union of life science is strong. If cutting taxpayer subsidies to scientists is too sensitive an idea, then we can use the power of the state to contain the costs of biologics, which we effectively subsidize.

A drug price fairness initiative is on the ballot in Ohio, and would enable public payers such as Medicaid to pay 20 percent under market price; transparency laws, established in Vermont make the costs of drugs clear; indeed, we may even cap the cost of biologics by executive order.

Entrepreneurial scientists are moving ahead with some exciting work on making use of CRISPR to disable genes in our T cells, which could prevent cancer cells from shutting down an immune response, and by adding bits of code to our immune cells to enable them to attach to abnormal protein fragments on solid tumors. If we take a tragic view of nature, these drugs will be priced as high as the market will allow. We can use the power of the state to change that.

Once difficult and expensive even for the most technologically advanced labs, genetic testing is fast becoming a cheap and easy consumer product. With a little spit and 200 dollars, you can find out your risk for everything from cystic fibrosis to lactose intolerance.

But its important to remember that not all genetic tests are created equal. And even the best clinical genetic test, carried out in a medical lab under a doctor’s supervision, isn’t perfectgenes are important, but they don’t seal your fate.

Genetic tests are diagnostic, so anyone who is curious about their health can get one done. But they’re more informative if you think you might be at risk for a genetic disorder.

Heavy-duty genetic tests have been used as a clinical tool for almost half a centurylong before 23andMe and Ancestry.com began offering direct-to-consumer tests. Lets say that many women in your family have had breast cancer. You can get a genetic test to see if you may have inherited an abnormal version of the BRCA gene, known to increase your risk for breast cancer.

Heidi Rehm, associate professor of pathology at Harvard Medical School, is the director of the Laboratory for Molecular Medicine, where patients get tested for diseases that can be traced to specific genetic roots. She says it is most common for people to get tested when they either suspect or know that they have a genetic disease; it may have affected multiple people in their family or they could show symptoms of something widely known to be genetic, like sickle cell anemia. For these people, genetic tests can provide a much-needed explanation for an illness and help doctors determine the best course of treatment. Babies are often tested for genetic diseases, either while they are still fetuses or shortly after birth.

Others get genetic tests if they and their partner both have family histories of an inherited diseaseeven if they dont have the disease themselves. For example, cystic fibrosis is linked to one particular gene, but you have to inherit the abnormal version of the gene from both your parents to get the disease. If you only inherit one copy, you may never knowyou wont display any of the symptoms. But if you and your partner both carry one copy of the faulty gene, your child could still inherit two copies. Genetic tests can forewarn you of that possibility.

But Rehm says there has been a recent trend of healthy people getting tested to predict whether theyll get certain diseases. I do think there are settings where predictive genetic testing is incredibly important and useful, Rehm says; for example, knowing that youre at risk for breast cancer gives you the opportunity for early intervention (remember when Angelina Jolie got a double mastectomy upon finding out she had a mutated BRCA gene?)

But Rehm also points out that genetic tests may not be as straightforward as they seem. For example, some genes are thought to increase risk of getting a certain disease, but it might only happen if you have specific family history, or you might be able to reduce your risk with lifestyle changes. So remember that a genetic test isnt the final verdictthere are other factors at play too.

Not entirelyits scope is limited. For starters, not all diseases are caused by genes. Plenty of conditions stem from environmental and lifestyle factors; they may interact with your genes, but the external factors are the real trigger.

But even if a disease is caused solely by faulty instructions written in your genes, you wont necessarily be able to test for it. Thats because genetic tests are mainly used for diseases that are penetrant, a term that scientists use to describe a strong connection between having a certain gene (or multiple genes) and getting a disease.

Genetic tests are surprisingly simple on the surface. All thats required of you is a small sample of cells, like a blood sample or saliva (which doesnt have DNA itself, but picks up cheek cells during its journey out of your mouth). It get sent to a lab where sequencing machines match up small pieces of synthetic DNA with your DNA to figure out the overall sequence.

Once they have your sequence, geneticists can compare it with “normal” or disease-causing sequences. In the end, they might give you a yes or no answer, or sometimes youll get a probabilitya measure of how much your genes increase your risk of developing the disease. Then, its up to your doctor to figure out what these genes (in combination with your lifestyle, family history and other risk factors) mean for your health.

With penetrant diseases, theres a very, very high ability to explain the disease, Rehm says. For example, the breast cancer-related gene BRCA1 can give you a 60 percent chance of getting breast cancer (in Jolies case, with her family history, the risk was 87 percent.)

This makes genetic tests better at detecting so-called rare diseases, says Steven Schrodi, associate research scientist at the Marshfield Clinic Research Institutes Center for Human Genetics, but theyre less useful when it comes to more common diseases, like heart disease or diabetes. Genetics can increase your likelihood of getting these disease, but scientists still dont know quite how much. Part of the problem is that there may be dozens or hundreds of genes responsible for these diseases, Schrodi says.

We have an incomplete understanding of why people get diseases, Schrodi says. A large part of it hinges on how we define diseases. Perhaps physicians have inadvertently combined multiple diseases together into a single entity.

Consumer genetic teststhe ones where you send in samples from homesometimes claim to test for these more complex traits, but be careful: Their results might not be very medically relevant, Rehm says. If they tell you that your genes make you twice as likely to develop diabetes, for example, that’s a marginal increase that doesn’t significantly affect your risk, especially when you take into account lifestyle factors.

Genes do seem to play a role in determining lifespan. After all, some family reunions stretch from great-great-grandparents all the way down to infants. Scientists have studied centenarianspeople who lived to be 100 years oldand found that people with certain versions of genes involved in repairing DNA tend to live longer.

This makes sense because aging leaves its mark on your DNA. Environmental factors can damage DNA, and even the routine chore of replicating cells can introduce errors as the three billion units of your DNA are copied over and over. Long-lived individuals have different sequences that seem to make their cells better at keeping DNA in mint condition.

But figuring out your expiration date is more complex than just testing for a few genes, says Jan Vijg, professor of genetics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. In theory, you could design a test that looks at specific genes that might measure your risk for developing Alzheimers Disease or other age-related diseases, or your risk for aging quickly. To some extent, yes: Biomarkers will tell you something about your chances of living a long life, Vijg says. Still, that will only work if you live a careful life. And that means no accidents, infections, or cancers.

Aging also affects the exposed ends of your DNA, called “telomeres.” DNA is stored as chromosomes, those X-like structures that you may have seen in biology textbooks. The most vulnerable parts of the chromosome are the chromosomes tips, which get shorter as you age because they arent properly replicated. But while telomere length might let you compare your DNA now with your DNA from a decade ago, you cant compare your own telomeres with other peoples telomeres. Theres a lot of variation between individuals, Vijg says. Some of us are just old souls (on the genomic level, that is.)

The methylation test, which looks at how the presence of small chemical groups attached to your DNA changes as you age, might be a better bet. A study at UCLA showed that changes were slower in longer-lived people. But Vijg is hesitant: I would not put my hopes on that as a marker to predict when exactly youre going to die.

For now, just enjoy your life, because you cant predict death. And if you decide to unlock the secrets of your DNA with an at-home test, don’t take those results for more than their worth.

2017 Healthline Media UK Ltd. All rights reserved. MNT is the registered trade mark of Healthline Media. Any medical information published on this website is not intended as a substitute for informed medical advice and you should not take any action before consulting with a healthcare professional.

WORCESTER – Concerned with President Donald J. Trumps proposal to cut National Institutes of Health funding by 22 percent, UMass Medical School officials, researchers and local political leaders gathered Wednesday to discuss the scientific and economic importance of robust NIH funding.

Were deeply concerned with the proposed cuts by the president and the impact it could have on innovation, medical progress, the health and well-being of patients and our local innovation economy, said Michael F. Collins, chancellor of UMass Medical School.

Dr. Collins estimated that the presidents proposal could cost the school between $45 million and $73.5 million annually and cost the local economy from $100 million to $170 million annually. This is a critical time in our country in terms of the future viability of the research and development environment, and its a critical time for our institution and our city, given how important this sector is to our economy.

In his 2018 budget request, Mr. Trump proposed cutting the NIH, the nations preeminent and largest funder of biomedical research, by $7.7 billion from its final budget in 2017.

That has the local scientific community worried, as UMass Medical School currently receives more than $150 million annually from 344 NIH funding awards and nearly $53 million from other federal funding sources. NIH funding is more than half of the nearly $254 million in total research funding the medical school receives from all sources.

This funding has helped lead to the development of lifesaving drugs for cystic fibrosis and supported work by Nobel Prize winner Craig Mello. It has also helped the medical school produce 148 licenses with 109 private companies and file hundreds and hundreds of patents, virtually all of which are attributable to NIH-funded research, according to Dr. Terence R. Flotte, executive deputy chancellor, provost and dean at UMass Medical School.

Also attributable to NIH funding is work by researcher Beth McCormick to improve chemotherapies and develop new anti-inflammatory treatments based on a study of how salmonella causes disease.

All of this was really launched by NIH, Ms. McCormick told the local leaders.

Aside from the scientific advances, the funding is also crucial to the local economy. A 2015 study by United for Medical Research showed that each dollar of NIH funding to Massachusetts institutions has an estimated economic impact of approximately $2.30, meaning UMass Medical Schools NIH-funded research contributes $347,971,099 to the Massachusetts economy.

Scientific research to Massachusetts and Worcester is what citrus growing is to Florida or auto production is to Michigan, said U.S. Rep. James P. McGovern, D-Worcester. He noted that Massachusetts ranks first in per-capita research funding from the NIH and second in total NIH funding behind only California.

He called the proposed cuts a threat to this citys and this states ability to thrive in the face of global competition, noting several other countries recent increases in medical research funding.

Dont be fooled into thinking this is just a Boston thing. Worcester does incredibly well, Mr. McGovern continued, noting that the NIH awarded a total of 369 grants worth nearly $165 million to Worcester institutions in 2016.

And city leaders want to ensure that this continues, especially as the city grows. Both Mayor Joseph M. Petty and City Manager Edward M. Augustus Jr. said that Worcester is experiencing a resurgence that they attribute to the citys institutions of higher learning and research community.

If there is anything that has the potential to limit or slow the work youre doing, it limits the ability for this city to grow and to thrive and limits the hope that the people who live in this city and around the world see in the work that youre doing, Mr. Augustus said. Your health and vitality as an institution are inextricably linked to our health and vitality as a city.

As for the likelihood of the proposed cuts being enacted, Mr. McGovern and Dr. Collins both noted that the NIH receives bipartisan support. In fact, Congress recently boosted the 2017 NIH budget by $2 billion despite the Trump administrations proposal for next year.

But local leaders arent taking any chances.

We need to really redouble our resolve, that the values of our nation invest in medical research and continue to bring hope to the human condition, Dr. Collins said. And all of us at UMMS will work with our governmental leaders to advocate for that funding.”